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How to Play Homeworld

Hey guys. Some of the staff are working on a little project to make Homeworld easily accessible and playable for newbies (ie, 90% of these forums.) We think we've scavenged all the necessary files from the far corners of the intertubes, but having the ships is only half the battle! One needs to know how to use them!

This is where you come in. O Homeworld veterans of old, we seek thy wise and divine knowledge of the pewpew. Post your tips, tricks, and strategies for newbies (or the very rusty) and help them figure out how our beloved classic works!

Kharak needs every pilot and crew member, men! We must unite and share, as the great clans did, for one purpose:

I'm not a pro, but:

Use support frigates to repair damaged ships OR while assembling formations. The veterans can explain corvette walls better than I, but the trick with supporting properly is to make sure that the frigates repair each other as well as their 'wards'. Of course, you can always just micro, but where's the fun in that?

Also, for multi, make sure to harass your opponents' resourcers early on. Even just making them turn back ONCE (because they're set to 'normal' tactics) can cost the lead in the early game.

Looking for multiplayer and mechanical advice mostly - ie, focus firing, formations, build orders, how to manage your fleet effectively. Basically anything, big or small, that you think it might be useful for someone to know. For example:

Resource controllers greatly speed up your harvesting efficiency by providing a mobile, on-the-spot drop-off point for your collectors. Have a controller "guard" (keyboard shortcut G) a group of two or three collectors and it will automatically follow them around. Try to keep collector/controller groups near each other - the controller will attempt to stay equidistant from its charges, so if they're harvesting dust clouds on opposite sides of the map it's going to be a very long haul! You can manually readjust where your collectors harvest by selecting the collector(s) and right-clicking on an asteroid. You can also bandbox select a group of asteroids using the H keyboard shortcut.

as a tip for MP
fighters will not be your mainstay the whole game
do not invest too much in them.
they are great harassment units
but when the light corvette comes out to play,
fighters better well stay away from them
simply because of the sheer armor increase in the corvette class.

use fighters to harass and scout for wandering resource collectors
but once any corvette walls start sniffing your way.
you'll lose a lot of RU spent on fighters

Lights/caps - generally used on maps where you don't get a lot of research ships (Talas), your research tree goes light corvettes and then up the capital ship tree. Put the corvettes in a wall with support frigates behind them. Your goal here is to hold off the enemy swarm/wall while getting a sufficient capital fleet to squash the other guy.

ints/caps - alternative to lights caps, where you seek to rapidly dominate the fighter battle and destroy enemy collectors.

Double wall - light corvettes, then capital ship drive, heavy corvettes, then the rest of the capital ship tree. Goal is to either hold off the swarm or crush a light wall. Works better when you can get more research ships (e.g. 2 on Talas).

Triple wall - the main strategy on subjugate. Lights, capital ship drive, heavy and multigun corvs, then up the capital ship tree. Not very good without being able to get lots of research ships.

Bomber swarm - tends to get light corvettes, optional capital ship drive, then interceptors and attack bombers. Aims to crush enemy strike craft and hit their collectors before they can build up their own strike craft or corvwall to be able to defend.

Defender swarm - hypothetical hard counter to bomber swarm. Same research path, would have the same goal if put against any other strategy (kill enemy strike craft, then hit the collectors).

Straight caps - not very viable on most maps unless mixed with grav wells or defense frigates due to vulnerability to any sort of early strike craft strategy.

All strategies are map dependent. Each map has different openings of collectors, controllers, and research ship numbers. You tend to get 4 collectors and a controller on Talas and Subjugate, 5 or six collectors and two controllers on Dante's Fate, and I can't really remember any other maps off the top of my head.

Don't waste frigates by building support frigates. Use repair corvettes instead. 4 repair corvettes are more effective than a support frigate, and aren't much more expensive.

A repair corvette heals 45 damage per second, a support frigate repairs 100. While repair corvettes are cheaper than support frigates, they're also much more fragile. They tend to get volleyed before you can tell them to heal each other, a problem support frigates don't suffer until very late game with massive capital ship fleets or battleballs running around. You'll end up replacing a lot more repair corvettes than support frigates.

hiroshi has good advice - I lost many a frustrating game to a few corvettes in the right place at the right time, after having spent far too much money on fighters and fighter upgrades. However, they are not useless - even unupgraded, they (inties or bombers) are the perfect resourceop-harassment unit, and that is something you'll want to be doing constantly throughout the game. Getting and keeping control of resource fields is huge (though this could be seen as rather trite advice for any experienced RTS player)

As far as singleplayer goes, 5th's advice is actually quite sound. Go ahead and experiment - you'll be surprised at all the cool ships you can steal. Why build an expensive destroyer when you can just salvage all three enemy destroyers for the half the cost and some careful timing?

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

I am not a pro, nor noob when it comes to this game, always the most obvious word of advice for this game... DO A BARREL ROLL! no sorry thats not it, well how i beat the game was like this, i kept my Ru harvesting highly protected via drone frigate i had atleast 2 Mobile refineries and 6 Miners for the bigger ones, i usually only went between 3 to 4 on smaller zones... but thats to keep your money up. I rarely built a single corvette, or a single frigate for battle period. but as time went on and i kept on getting better fighter research, i eventually got that gravity thingy you know when the fighter just twists around and is helpless. i think these affected mine too. but to keep to the point, i never built a corvette i had well over 40 fighters, but when i got cloaked fighters, i would just cloack and tell them to run over to the killer zone, and let them do there thing, seeing how they cloak back immediatly after a bombing run. but if you use frigate or cap ships they are much of a hassle, funny part is that i actually beat the game no building one assault capital ship, the Kadesh were much easier than normal too. but thats just suggestion for the lazy type...

Support frigs can repair corvettes using the green beam so you don't have to dock them. This can be handy if you're trying to capture the enemy heavy cruiser. Also for cap ships and frigs is to focus fire on the biggest damaging ship first, then the 2nd, then 3rd etc while using corvettes and fighters to protect the caps. Though if you hate using fighters and corvettes, then use grav wells but carefull not to try hyperspace out near an active grav well, even your own.

Four assault frigates in Wall/Agressive, a DFF, and a support frigate can kill an ungodly number of Destroyers if you gut-rip from below and keep move-attacking to stay out of the ion cannons.

The hungry, ignorant man immediately grasps that he is handed a fish, but is bewildered when handed a net. The man who shivers in the cold thinks happily of the man who invites him to sit by his fire, and somewhat poorly of the man who loans him an axe, flint and steel.

Co-ordinate strikes with your teammates, and don't leave them hanging if they're getting stomped. Resource control is key. Speaking of resources, be careful as Ion Cannons can ionize dust clouds, damaging any ship that enters.

Some good responses so far guys. I would ask, that, while it's okay and good to be funny, please be sure you're being constructive. We are trying to build a general repository of strategies and tactics, it can't just be full of in-jokes.

Some leading questions:

-Which are more cost-efficient, ion cannon frigates or assault frigates?
-What are the practical differences between the two races? Is one better than the other?
-What is probe bombing? When is it used?
-What is ramming and how does one do it?
-What units are best for aggressive strategies? Defensive strategies?
-What are good teamplay strategies? Should tasks be specialized (one person harvests, one goes anti-fighter, another anti-cap-ship) or should everyone generalize?
-Camera-usage. How do you orient the camera when giving orders? Zoomed out, top-down, or do you zoom around the battlefield? What do you recommend?
-Are there any terrain features that affect strategy or the way you play? Obviously resource placement, but stuff like electrifying dust clouds that Starblade mentioned.

If anyone else has any questions (hypothetical or ones they'd actually like answered) feel free to post them. Please keep in mind this is HW1 discussion, not Cata or HW2.

Battle Balls
Melvin got the bball down.
fighters in sphere guarding a scout or two
move the guarded fighter to move the bball around
however it has its time and place.
a heavy corvette special attack can wipe out a bball easily
so always be wary of any heavy corvettes getting close to it
bballing is basically like having a drone frigate,
but much more powerful, fast and expensive
it moves faster than a standard sphere attack
and you can manoeuvre to hit that sweet damage spot on frigates

down side is that its a lot or RU in fighters
if you lose the scout that's being guarded
your battle ball will go into disarray and the fighters will be easy pickings
and you can't pick which ship the fighters attack

Scuttling a Kushan probe causes a fairly large explosion that can destroy a scout and damage other fighters.

Probe bombing involves sending probes so that they move through a mass of enemy scouts and timing the scuttle so that the explosion catches some or all of them.

It doesn't work so well with the Taiidan probe which has a much smaller explosion radius.

Probe golf:

Probe golf is a useless but rather amusing game to be played pre match where you see if you can strike the enemy mother ship with a sensors manager aimed probe. It's easier vs a Taiidan mothership as the probe has less chance of dodging.

Racing collectors:

Build a scout and a collector.

Select the scout and put it in a group.

Select the collector and order it to "kamikaze" the scout (k).

The collector will start moving towards the scout.

Select the scout.

When the collector gets close it will speed up a lot, now move the scout away!

If you time it right the collector will keep its speed boost and will chase the scout.

Once you're where you need to go, just cancel the collector's orders.

Micro claws:

Scouts and fighters in general should be formed up in small, "micro" claw formations of usually 5 ships each. You can have them all in one group but the smaller formations give the benefits of formations without the huge manoeuvring times that come with large formations.

Hyper scouts:

When you attack enemy scouts with your own scouts put them on evasive and order them to kamikaze just before they engage. Now hammer the speed burst button. They will be much more effective and will not actually collide much. This is often referred to as "F2kzzzzzz". The timing of the z can actually be important.

A counter to this is to just cancel the orders on your scouts, usually everything dies as the enemy actually hit their targets but you may get lucky and be left with some ships.

You can get some really cool screenshots if you do this to a dust cloud, just get your scouts to force attack the cloud then F2kzzzz, it's a really cool effect, just don't forget to zzz or they'll all hit each other

Research ramming:

On small maps with more than one research ship to start (subjugate is a prime example) your research ship can be a weapon. Move it to the centre of the map and when you see enemy collectors or controllers try to move your research ship through them. If you do it well the collisions will kill the enemy ships and you won't take much damage.

NEVER ELECTRIFY ION CLOUDS IN A MULTIPLAYER GAME This will generate a sync error and the game will be useless, you'll start seeing different things from the other players.

Hyperspace trap
If you somehow manage to get a gravity well near enemy ships hyperspacing, turn it on, the ships will not be able to escape hyperspace but they are salvageable without being able to fight.

Scout super dogfighting.
Put scouts in a wall formation, keep pressing Z and use ctrl and target 3 or less enemy strike craft at a time, keep re targeting and pressing Z, your scouts will fight and move like crazy flies on steroids.

Protip : Every unit has a use, you need the right trick and tactics.

Carrier ramming
Your carriers can ram the enemy ship by moving them close to them, them move them again a couple of times, this is a ideal tactic in carrier only games.

Taidan support frigates can knock enemy frigates away in a few numbers.

Defense fighter weapon
The defense fighter has a weapon, attack a target, release the target and kamikaze, you have a small chance of the defense fighter using a kind of beam that slaughters corvettes and hurts frigates a bit.
Mostly used as last resort.

Reuse a probe
Select the used probe, press home and quickly press M, you can use the probe again.

Simple tips
Don't forget, let the resource controller guard a collector so it keeps following, also use escorts on collectors (logical)

The interceptor can easily get outnumbered by scouts, no doubt, the defender is a real pain as its build pretty quickly and is a ideal sniper.

Minefields are always a pain, always, although with control+shift+drag select you can order ships to attack mines, very effective with a missile destroyer.

Missile destroyers have overall lower firepower than normal destroyers, do not use them for anti capital needs.

Support frigates can hyperspace strike craft, dock all strike craft (carefully) so when the first one starts entering the dock, hyperspace, the frigate waits for all ships that entered dock-formation and dock, then it hyperspaces the party.

If goodie crates are enabled, use probes and always look at the sensors manage often in the game, in my best game I had 3 destroyers, 6 frigates, a carrier and 20.000 ru overall from them.

Nebulas contain tons of resources, it's good to go for those first in a game.

The Taidan Heavy Cruiser is also effective againts corvettes as it's ion cannons turn quickly enough and have a far better firing arc than the kushan one.

Probe reuse:
That's a neat trick, there's a more elaborate but more reliable way too. Group the probe and mothership in 1. Group the probe in 2. In the sensors manager select 1 and M. Now select 2, you'll still be in move mode.

IIRC sphere formation of bombers make very short work of capital ships and others large ships without anti-fighter/bomber point defenses. However any fighters, missile frigates, or corvettes will eat bombers in sphere formation alive so this can only be done in situations where those units are tied up or not there. Or if you really have to kill something quick no matter the cost.

I think you're thinking of super scouts, where you could keep retargeting your opponents scouts to make your scouts keep restarting their attack run - that was patched out with 1.05. F2kzzz are hybrid scouts, which are superfast scouts that ram up behind your opponents scouts and chase them along whilst shooting them. Its kind of an exploit of the kamikaze command, and definitely still works in 1.05.

The other famous one, of course, is evil scouts. ES is basically fast formation switching, which creates "twitching" scouts that are really difficult to shoot down.

Another cool one, which is a bit more involved, is "Albino" scouts. Initially set your scouts to f2 for the first attack. Z burst them around a little bit and break up your opponents scouts.

When they are spread out a bit, set your scouts back to f4 aggressive and then f9 wall. Here comes the pudding: Attack run, your scouts are on f9. When they pass their opponent, switch to f11. They will flip around really quickly, then set them back to f9. All this time you are doing speed bursts (z) regularly.

Rinse, repeat.

Occasionally, your scouts will hit a real purple patch where they will find many opponent scouts in front of them. They will do a kind of "muzzle run", where they switch really quickly from target to target, aggressively eating up everything in its path. They can literally take out an entire swarm in one run when it gets into this mode.

p.s. Battleballs won't work unless your fighters are set to f4 (aggressive). You also don't need to guard other scouts - it will work if you guard anything (and you can also use bombers and interceptors in your ball).

Protip: Kushan support frigs can heal themselves (just z-double click them), but taiidan support frigs have a better scuttle blast radius (will take out a bunch of fighters if they are close). Support frigate micromanagement is one of the expert skills in the game - you will know you are playing a pro when you just can't kill their supports.

When you bball, i dont recommend a scout or two.. i prefer light vets. A skilled player is going to be able to take out one or two scouts in seconds, thus causing your bball to expand and be destroyed extremely quickly.

They work pretty well with probes too. Be warned with battleballs, though - one scuttled collector or repair frigate can kill 30-40 scouts set in a bball with one explosion. The skilled bballer learns how to stay at arms length.

Support frigates can hyperspace strike craft, dock all strike craft (carefully) so when the first one starts entering the dock, hyperspace, the frigate waits for all ships that entered dock-formation and dock, then it hyperspaces the party.

To add to this, do not, under any circumstances, cancel the dock order on the strike craft when the hyperspace window has opened. It seems to cause them to vanish into hyperspace and stay there.

In multiplayer team games, if you hyperspace all your ships just before your mothership blows up, they will re-appear out of hyperspace and you can still control them & attack people, even though you are dead (as long as you still have one or more alive team-mates).

Just don't send your only carrier. When in hyperspace, it's not in the game as far as Homeworld is concerned, so if your Mothership explodes, you lose (but you get control of ships in hyperspace anyway).

Casefigure strat I wrote 6 years ago

Kushan plan: 5/2 cols, three research, gravs to caps, research caps drive, gravs, then assaults. (Salves after assaults, split research up, one on salves, two on ions)

He moves MS to middle, as soon as u get controller able to build, send a coll to the top cloud, the next coll u build also goes to top cloud. Follow it with the first controller u build.

Don’t build second controller until you are a bit better in the ru, besides u wont need it until you have to go to the middle and that’s a long time off

The three remaining colls, they keep harvesting the dust near the MS, then go to middle as late as possible, followed by the controller.

Start building support right of the bat, and don’t forget the scouts.

By the time your three colls reach the middle, you’ll have at least two gravs and two assaults and plenty supports.

Taiidan plan:

5/2 colls, three research, caps/ field frigs.

Research cap drive, cap chassis, field frig, ions, destys.

Harvesting is exactly the same as the Kushan guy; only he sends his two colls and controller to the BOTTOM cloud.

This capper does not start building supports right off the bat: he'll need money for the assault frigs, he needs firepower, start building them when your two colls reach the bottom cloud.

By the time this player hits the middle he'll have 4/5 assaults, 4 supports, AND a field frigate.

No swarm can beat this, no wall stands a chance against this, if u play TOGETHER AS A TEAM:

Drag the enemy strike craft in the wells with ur scouts. Meanwhile the field capper is attacking enemy colls, damaging till their halfway dead, that way, if they decide to kami in the gravs, they will lose the coll but if the grav is supported, u will NOT lose the grav. By the way you’ll have plenty gravs, so u can afford a slip up.

Once the enemy has most his strike craft in the well range, put the grav on.
fieldcapper starts killing all the fighters and corvs in RECORD tempo (one of the sweetest things in hw is seeing four assaults kill 80 strike craft in a minute) , and sends his field frig over to block the fire of ANY attacking enemy assault frigs (if they chose strike craft they wont have ions yet, not by a long shot) whilst gravver helps using his assaults and a few of his supports (not ALL of them u need to keep supporting the gravs, cant afford to loose em now) to kill enemy fighters caught in well.

next, turn gravs off a second and make bballs of ur scouts.
get them out of the gravs range and put gravs back on.
now you will have two capfleets and two bballs pounding away on what ? what do they have? three ions? four miners?

a good link that still works is:

Soban Force strategy forums
This page has a plethora of general tips and tricks and beginner to advanced strategies. Not all of it is 100% reliable, but there is definately some good stuff in there.